Description

If you didn’t know it, Turtles are not strictly aquatic animals, the do not have gills and to reproduce they need to lay their eggs on sand. Making them one of only a few species of animals on the planet that actually exhibit this dual ability to survive easily in both environments. This is a photo of a Hawksbill Sea Turtle going up to the surface to catch a breath and return to the ocean floor.

If you are photographing a Hawksbill or any Turtle for that matter, you need to remember that Turtles are not all that smart, they are commonly known to get so scared or disturbed by divers that they forget to go to the surface for air, they sadly then drown. This is not something you want to see happen and certainly not something you want to be the root cause of, so when photographing Turtles, be mindful, give them plenty of space and do not let people crowd them or hem them in, and certainly don’t let anyone touch them!

I once saw a pissed off Hawksbill slam into a diver so hard, the diver was nearly knocked unconscious, he had been blinding it with a powerful torch. Up till then I had no Idea Turtles could move fast in the water, I’d always seen them swimming slowly, but boy can they move when they want or need to, it shot into the diver like a Rugby player in a burst of speed I would not have believed if I hadn’t seen it. The moral here is listen to your guides and don’t harass the wildlife!

Also not in this photo the massive chunk that, something, took out of this poor guy on the right of the image, his shell has quite the dent, and he is missing an entire lower plate, honestly it was probably a boat propeller sadly, but at least he lived and we got to spend some time with this awesome guy.